Caltech Astronomers Discover Oldest Galaxy Yet Known 63
An anonymous reader writes: Caltech astronomers have discovered a galaxy believed to be the oldest and farthest ever observed. They estimate it to be 13.2 billion years old. The universe itself is about 13.8 billion years old. The discovery may lead to a revision of theories of age and evolution of the early universe. The team published their findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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Get off my plasma!
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Oldies are goodies.
Indeed. What made this galaxy stand out is that they found it on the southbound 405 doing 35 mph... in the passing lane... with it's left turn indicator blinking...
600 million, not thousand (Score:3, Informative)
A tenth of a billion is 100 million, so 600 million years younger, not 600 thousand.
Re:600 million, not thousand (Score:5, Funny)
They're using imperial years, not metric.
Re:600 million, not thousand (Score:5, Informative)
I would have joked about imperial versus metric billion instead:
A billion is a large number with two distinct definitions:
1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or 109 (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now generally the meaning in both British and American English.[1][2]
1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 1012 (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the long scale. This is one thousand times larger than the short scale billion, and equivalent to the short scale trillion.
American English always uses the short scale definition but British English has employed both versions. Historically, the United Kingdom used the long scale billion but since 1974 official UK statistics have used the short scale. Since the 1950s the short scale has been increasingly used in technical writing and journalism, although the long scale definition still enjoys common usage.[3]
Another word for one thousand million is milliard, but this is used much less often in English than billion. Some languages, such as French or German, use milliard (or a related word) for the short scale billion, and billion (or a related word) for the long scale billion. Thus the French or German billion is a thousand times larger than the modern English billion.
Of course, the error in summary goes is clearly not related to this issue... it's just wrong rather than nerdy wrong as would befit this site. :P
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> Of course, the error in summary goes is clearly not related to this issue
Indeed, 13.2 billion as the age of the universe is disambiguated only by what web site you read it on - if it's Slashdot, 1E9 years, while if it's on some religious blog, then about a thousand years or less.
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"Another word for one thousand million is milliard,"
And presumably 1000 (British) Billion is a Billiard
But I prefer snooker
Quoting Annonymous Readers (Score:2)
Slashdot editors, not so much. Still, the linked article is an interesting read.
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Rounding.
Distance (Score:1)
How do they determine distance based on redshift? Isn't redshift caused by a velocity difference?
Re:Distance (Score:5, Informative)
The universe is expanding in every direction. Think of it as a balloon inflating. Any two spots on the surface become further and further apart. The farther they are from each other, the faster the move away from each other as the balloon inflates.
Similarly, as the universe expands, the objects that are the furthest away move the fastest away from us, thus causing more redshift than objects closer to us. Although you should not think as much as the object itself moving away, as much as the space between the objects becoming larger.
Sorry if your ears are bleeding now.
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How do we know there aren't galaxies beyond our ability to see them already?
Re:Distance (Score:5, Informative)
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However, within the next 10 years I suspect they will start finding galaxies older than the big bang.
What would be even better, would be blueshifted galaxies from a different big bang. That would raise some eyebrows...
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This is true. However, within the next 10 years I suspect they will start finding galaxies older than the big bang.
You can, of course, suspect what you like, but out of curiousity why? What we see is remarkably consistent with a big bang. The very old galaxies we
see are small and poorly structured, as we would expect, the CMB is still there, etc.
13.8b - 13.2b = 600m (Score:2)
Re: Older than Big Bang galaxies (Score:2)
Nope it will be falling ratings.
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Assuming an imaginary balloon that never explodes and we're filling up with air at a constant rate, yes, you are right! The volume differential is less each time, so the overall inflating of the balloon is slower over time.
However, in the case of the universe, the balloon is being inflated faster as time passes by (current universe expansion is assumed to be accelerating). Furthermore, even in the case of a steadily inflating balloon, we're talking about relative speeds between dots on the s
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- Cancer has no cure
- Fusion power generation still not built
- Cosmology has been a waste of time for some time now as its not solving real problems
Nope nope not at all. Cosmology serves as an object lesson in what happens when you let academics get entrenched
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You have no grasp of Cosmology _at_ _all_.
Part of what this makes News is that we now have a target to analyze Spectroscopically.
Nucleosynthesis in first generation Galaxies is still opaque to us; we can replicate various Models at Accelerators, but we still have no clue as to which Models are correct and most probable.
Screw you and whatever Tinker-Toy Tech education that you have. You sure as hell have no place in the Academia that you so despise.
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You have no grasp of Cosmology _at_ _all_.
Part of what this makes News is that we now have a target to analyze Spectroscopically.
Nucleosynthesis in first generation Galaxies is still opaque to us; we can replicate various Models at Accelerators, but we still have no clue as to which Models are correct and most probable.
Screw you and whatever Tinker-Toy Tech education that you have. You sure as hell have no place in the Academia that you so despise.
Thank you for making my point for me.
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Re:In other news today... (Score:5, Informative)
> Cosmology serves as an object lesson in what happens when you let academics get entrenched
They get to see the handwriting of God, writ large in the universe around us? They explain the very origins of matter, and solve Fermi's Paradox? They help provide a sense of scale to our image of ourselves in the universe? They confirm the interactions of gravity and light, fundamental forces in physics? They explain the concentrations of different types of matter in the universe? They explain and reveal the nature of background radiation that affect electronics, and weather?
It's amazing how looking at the largest scales of the universe leads back to information about the smallest scales of the universe, and both _do_ affect every day life. We just tend not to notice that from day to day.
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> Cosmology serves as an object lesson in what happens when you let academics get entrenched
They get to see the handwriting of God, writ large in the universe around us? They explain the very origins of matter, and solve Fermi's Paradox? They help provide a sense of scale to our image of ourselves in the universe? They confirm the interactions of gravity and light, fundamental forces in physics? They explain the concentrations of different types of matter in the universe? They explain and reveal the nature of background radiation that affect electronics, and weather?
It's amazing how looking at the largest scales of the universe leads back to information about the smallest scales of the universe, and both _do_ affect every day life. We just tend not to notice that from day to day.
More the case they fancy themselves the theologians of science.
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I'm sorry, I mentioned the wrong paradox. They have contributed to understanding the Fermi Paradox solution by setting an upper bound to the size and age of the perceptible universe, and a maximum age of the components for complex chemistry that might sustain life.
The paradox they really solved is Ober's Paradox, which involves a tradeoff between the density of glowing objects like stars, and how many are in a volume, and why the more distant stars do not radiate so much light to be seen, even faintly, at E
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In 1920, we thought the entire universe was our galaxy. Think about that, you provincial halfwit.
Thank the Astronomers. Cosmologists were just as dogmatically certain then as they are now.
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Billion, million, whatever (Score:4, Insightful)
They estimate it to be 13.2 billion years old, making it only about 600,000 years younger than the Big Bang.
Only out by a factor of 1000. Not bad.
I don't suppose anyone will actually bother editing it to stop Slashdot looking like an idiot.
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It might be a bit too advanced for you, but my older sister really is born before me!
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You're an idiot.
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Does it? Do explain why.
not 13.2 billion years old (Score:4, Insightful)
What we are seeing is not a galaxy that is 13.2 billion years old. Rather, we are seeing a galaxy as it existed 13.2 billion years ago. It is actually quite young, for a galaxy.
assumptions (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they observed a galaxy with a redshift of 8.86. It is *assumed* that such a redshift is due to both Hubble expansion of space and relative velocity to us. Then an age and distance is calculated. However the underlying assumptions may be wrong.
I like the realistic picture - merely a point (Score:2)